Without Eros, life has no purpose. It is a long empty march to nowhere

L'Abbaye dans la Forêt, Caspar David Friedrich, 1805-1810

It is a most wholesome thing . . .to join, in imagination, the mournful company of dim souls whose lives were sacrificed to the great machine that still grinds on. On the banks of the river of Time, the sad procession of human generations is marching slowly to the grave.

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell